


the body religion

by lalalyds2



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Heavy Angst, and depictions of basically Dante's Inferno in the next chapters, basically zelda fights hell to bring hilda back from death, maybe it's not that angsty - i can't tell cuz i wrote it, there's death in here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2020-09-06 02:50:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20284177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalalyds2/pseuds/lalalyds2
Summary: there is no action without consequencethere is no movement without lossthere is no zelda without hildahilda faces council judgement for murdering methuselah





	1. the light going out

**Author's Note:**

> this started as a prompt from a song i wrote called 'the body religion'  
now it is an ugly mess of self-projection  
whoops

Field spreads out like gold dust.

Wheat grass bows in bobbing reverence to the ocean bowl sky.

Wind caresses in passing fancy.

Her head is full up of daisies and drowsy, propped against the solid press of cottoned thigh.

Hilda’s hand warm on her bicep, fingers tracing the river lines her veins make.

Back of her hand against Hilda’s knee, pale and rhythmic on the wrinkled dimples.

It shifts as Hilda squirms, calling ticklish.

Zelda looks at her through green lenses.

Hilda emerald.

Mermaid-ish in exquisite detail.

In a fit of sudden affection, she reaches up, pulls one perfect ringlet, watches as it bounces back.

Hilda is fond exasperated, shoving her hand away from blond temptation.

This is summer eternal.

This is power.

Zelda closes her eyes to it, soaks it in like a pleasant dream.

“I think it’s going to rain,” Hilda notes after a while, eyes cerulean against grain as she searches the sky for clouds.

“It’s not supposed to.”

A high hum.

Hilda’s hand goes soft on her hair.

“Shall we go inside?”

“In a minute.”

Not often does Zelda simply gets to live, Hilda by her side, as the world passes.

Too many days, she is holding it up, managing coven and sacred code.

It is a peculiar happiness.

Eudaemonia, yet draining.

It is not as easy as resting her head in Hilda’s lap, feeling the weight of the heavens drop on her forehead in little pellets of water.

“Inside?” Hilda prompts, nose scrunching as light shower deepens to bucketing roar.

They leave the blanket, the basket, for tomorrow’s trudgery.

Instead, they clench hands, sliding on grass, drenched and giddy against the front door.

A strand of wet gold sticks to Hilda’s forehead, eyes lit like temple pyres.

“It’s been a good day, hasn’t it?”

It is no question that Zelda must push that liquid hair behind the ear, that she must push Hilda firm and gentle against the wood frame, that she must cup Hilda’s cheeks between two reverent palms.

It is pure reaction that Zelda murmurs a kiss against that Cupid’s mouth.

“The best.”

~*~

The after-glow lasts into twilight, gloaming bedroom walls with sleepy lavender light.

Zelda rubs lotion into elbows, rummages dresser for Hilda’s favorite nightgown.

Floral cotton folds, rustles against her hands as she searches something softer.

Fingers catch on parchment paper.

Perplexed, she pulls out a crimson letter.

It crinkles, the wrinkles testimony to being read many times over.

“_Hilda Spellman, you are hereby charged with the murder of..._”

Zelda drops it as though burned.

Brain singed on scalding information.

White panic.

It spikes.

She moves.

She has to find Hilda.

She is going to bury her.

~*~

“Explain. Now.”

Letter tossed on the kitchen counter like some disgusting, slimy thing.

Hilda takes one glance and shudders.

Returns to making tea.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t find that.”

“Find that my sister has an execution date hanging over her head? Spare me.”

“That’s what I was trying to do.”

Zelda’s scoff dangerous.

Hilda scrubs her face with pale hand, worry released from behind blue eyelids.

“We both knew there’d be consequences,” Hilda’s wisp voice is painfully quiet.

A ghost of placating doom.

“I killed a council member.”

“Methuselah was ancient, unliked, and vile.”

“Yet still a council member.”

Zelda slaps the wood. Cooking utensils rattle from the force of it.

Hilda’s throat a nervous swallow.

She watches knives as Zelda paces.

“They can’t do this. Lilith wouldn’t _stand_ for this—”

“This isn’t her doing.”

Zelda snarls at the sacrilege, yet they both know it to be truth.

This cry for retribution is an act of neither the sacred nor profane.

It is simply violence of men against a woman who dared against a man.

There’s nothing more to say.

More to ask.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

Accusation in question.

Hilda stirs her tea.

The silence is stifling.

Zelda grips a handle without knowing its edge.

“We could have _fought_ it, _I _could have—”

“It’s my battle. I lost.”

The knife is up against Hilda’s throat. Glints silver like scales, so ready to slit the fish.

“You don’t get to decide that.” Zelda’s eyes a frenzy, a desperation. “It doesn’t affect just you.”

Hilda’s calm intolerable.

“What would you have me do, sister? Seal all our fates instead of just my own, bring more unnecessary suffering to my family when it’s already inevitable?”

“You could have _tried_.”

The snarl a wild, gutted thing.

Blade pushes in, a bead of blood.

Hilda drips and doesn’t speak for fear of further damage.

Teacup clatters.

Time stops.

For Zelda, quite physically.

Her limbs freeze, ice in muscle.

The mind runs all faster for it.

She watches wide-eyed as Hilda leans back from her rancor, peach-tipped finger wiping ruby from a wincing neck.

“I won’t miss _that_, I must say.”

Mental mind screeches agony. Zelda’s mouth only manages to whisper Hilda’s name.

Eyes follow sister figure.

Hilda winces once more, rights the slipping cup, pours dark water into white porcelain.

“I _was_ going to say goodbye, but a nicer way.”

She turns, foxglove bottle in hand.

One drop in the tea.

“I was going to kiss you soft, tell you I love you.”

Another drop goes. 

“We would have shared tea; you’d have fallen asleep in our bed.”

Third drop now.

“And when you woke, a letter would have waited for you. It would have been gentle.”

Two more drops.

If taken, Zelda will sleep for days. 

Too late for saving.

Too late for goodbyes.

“Coward.”

She spits, Hilda’s magic too strong on the body to really move.

“Selfish wretch. I’ll kill you.”

“To keep me from dying?” Hilda asks, infuriating and incredulous brow raised.

Lightning flashes outside over an over-used grave.

“Again and again. You would come back.”

“Again and again, so would they.”

“You don’t know.”

Hilda, sour pucker.

“Neither do you.”

Zelda, sucker punched.

“They would turn on you,” A brave shield in Hilda’s gaze.

There’s nothing she won’t do to keep her family from harm.

“They would come for any Spellman they could. I won’t bear that kind of blood, I can’t.”

“Whatever it takes. They won’t have you.”

If she could move, she’d shake in rage.

Hilda’s looking at her with pity.

“Now who’s the selfish one?”

Hilda advances, teacup in hand.

Zelda rears back with all her force, only budges an inch.

Under kitchen lamplight, eyes swimming, Hilda looks resolute.

She looks sorry.

Zelda, in terror.

“You didn’t let _me _choose. I could’ve fought, could’ve come with. _Hildie_—”

The word breaks on them both.

“Let me choose.”

The head shake is painful, buoyant curls tossing in self-righteous sacrifice.

Warm porcelain raised to Zelda’s lips.

“You wouldn’t have chosen right.” 

Teacup tips.

Liquid fills Zelda’s mouth. It doesn’t even burn.

Lapsang brewed to sing, it lays sweet and thick on her tongue like cigarette smoke or prayer.

Colossal effort, she tries not to swallow.

She wills her body not to betray her.

“I love you, and I’m sorry.”

A kiss pressed to her throat, Hilda’s lips so familiar on her jugular, tenderness burning into skin.

She swallows.

The body betrays her anyway.

The water doesn’t hurt on the way down. But it should.

Oh, it does.

Magic released, Hilda stumbles to catch her.

Zelda limp, she tries to memorize the feel of her sister’s body against her own.

She sags in the chair she’s set in, eyes drooping and heart emptying.

Frightened is the last thing she’ll see on her sister’s face.

One more time, Hilda says she’s sorry.

“I don’t forgive you.”

Zelda sees the chin wobble, the shoulder tremble.

She cannot see if Hilda is crying.

The world is going so fuzzy.

“I’ll think of you, in the end.”

And then the world goes dark.

~*~

Someone is shouting her name.

Shoulders being jostled.

High pitched panic.

She wakes to Sabrina desperation. Ambrose worry.

She wakes in shuttering eyelids.

A flash of normalcy.

A flash of Hilda gone.

The world is lightning after.

She is not strong, she knows.

Foxglove stronger.

Zelda grabs Ambrose and Sabrina’s hands, pulls from them everything she can take.

She can’t focus, can only feel her body pulling to the one so far away.

She yanks, stretches farther than she can.

In a giant leap, giant drain, she and her family tumbles to the cold ground of the Vatican.

There is ancient here, unholy malevolence.

She ignores Sabrina’s questions, ignores the stiffness of Ambrose’ alarm.

Her steps slap against stone, thudding along in her eardrums as she searches for Hilda.

There is a faint pulse of recognition below, of body memory, of honey magic.

She flings wide every door, takes steps two at a time, ignores the stumbling of still-drugged limbs.

Descends to the belly of the beast.

She cannot breathe, so consumed by panic and a persistent hope that this isn’t real.

That Hilda is drinking tea.

That Hilda is back home.

That Hilda has chosen her, above all else.

The world is dimming again, signal she’s succumbing to chemical sleep.

She shoves it back, the bile back down her throat, pushes through.

The drums thud.

A dull chant.

She is getting closer.

Latin pulses against the walls, she keeps a hand on it to stay steady.

The vignette of unconsciousness is growing.

She keeps going.

The drone of male intonement overwhelming, she trips on power sensation.

There is one last hall to try.

She careens down it with increasing abandon, Hilda in her galloping heartbeat.

A gnarled, acidic door the only barrier between.

There is no magic in her, no spell or incantation, only sheer force of will.

The door shatters to fragments.

There is an instance.

She’s there.

Finally reached her.

Hilda’s eyes so real and wide.

Zelda’s name on her lips.

A brief, blissful, biting _hope_—

She goes up in white flame.

It lasts one infernal, eternal second.

Then no more.

Ash.

It snows down, disintegrating on hair and lashes.

Gets breathed in. Choked on.

There is nothing left of Hilda.

There is nothing left to save.

~*~

No man or animal can make this Zelda sound.

Skin rends.

Bones crack.

Less horrifying noise than Zelda’s agony.

Every last council member ripped to shreds on magic so fueled by hate it chokes to the very atom.

Sabrina and Ambrose watch the violence.

Cannot comprehend atrocity.

It ends.

It doesn’t matter.

Hilda is still gone.

~*~

It hurts to look at her aunt.

She is so deathly still.

Sabrina can’t bear to see it, can’t not.

It only lasts a second.

An infernal, eternal second.

Desolation deserves better witness.

Zelda, a hollow space.

A world that’s light-empty.

A heart that’s bled all the way out.

Sabrina watches this desert and does not know how to deal with the anguish parched.

She bites her own cracked lips and drinks water.

There is a cough building up deep in her lungs.

The air, drying alveoli.

Little cactus, she grows prickly.

Does not understand all this sacrificial loss.

Calls it a sacred waste.

It’s the first thing to rouse Zelda alive.

Sabrina has faced the devil himself and been less afraid.

Then Zelda is a motion.

She almost misses the stillness.

Zelda grabs hold the Vatican, razing down and reigning over, all in the name of Lilith.

Deus ex machina built back up again under a different name.

A savior for an after event.

Every night, Zelda goes prostrate and begs a miracle.

Begs for a body returned.

Begs and begs and begs.

She sleeps where she worships.

Anyone can see her fracturing parts on the cold stone floor.

Sabrina wants to go home.

Ambrose says there’s no such thing anymore.

He watches more silently than Sabrina.

Begs alongside Zelda, when the quiet is too deafening.

He begs for a bargain.

Almost anything for Aunt Hilda back.

But he’s seen the face of Lilith.

She is just an open mouth with many mouths.

Unable to break her name or religion, she only takes and takes and takes.

He wonders how much left they have to give.

~*~

When Zelda comes to what’s left of her family, she comes with a plan.

Sabrina is surprised.

Ambrose is not.

“You’re going to _hell_?” Sabrina’s tone incredulous.

Ambrose simply breathes.

“I will bring her back.”

“Aunt Zee, that can’t work. Remember when I tried to bring back Nick? I couldn’t.”

“_You_ still had something left to lose.”

Sabrina bites back her hurt. Some tears still slip through.

Zelda only blinks.

Gravity falls heavy on the last remaining Spellmans.

“What happens if you can’t?” Sabrina tries again.

Ambrose puts a hand to her shoulder. Is shrugged off.

“Then you,” Zelda’s gaze flickers between them both. “Will have a coven to run.”

“You won’t come back? What about us? I mean—it’s painful, but we’re still living.”

Ambrose knows her squeak is righteous in its self-obsession.

He will also miss his aunts more than anything.

It will make living more painful.

But he can see Zelda’s face, can see only ash in her eyes, can see an absolute truth as she says,

“Together, or not at all.”

He nods.

He knows.

She nods.

He says the only thing she needs to hear.

“Go get her.”

And then Zelda’s gone.


	2. block your sister so the sunbeams miss her

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so it's been a hot minute!! whoops.  
I spent a lot of time on this chapter.  
it is not accurate to any depiction of hell (sorry dante), but it Is a Fun one.  
Sorta. if u think depictions of hell are fun. which I sometimes do!  
..... anyway.  
as I described to my bestie, this is like a strobe light series of Happenings.  
Best to read it that way. It's linear, but only just.

_Thighs slipping, mouths lipping against sighs of wanton desire._

_Sisters lazing in sensation and rucked skirts._

_Spending teenage time in decadent yearning._

_Hilda kisses like her tongue keeps secrets._

_Zelda’s mouth, always a mystery._

_A shift, knees hit centers._

_A lush gasp._

_A throbbed groan._

_“Zelda, I want—”_

_A laugh._

_“You’ve had enough. I’ve got to go.”_

_And Zelda sitting up, hair tossed in dismissive humor, reaching out and wiping herself off Hilda’s lips._

_“But _I_ can’t come with.”_

_“Don’t whine, Hildegard. You’re not old enough, but you’re too old for that.”_

_“Soon I will be—” _

_“Yes, and then wherever I am, you can be too.”_

_A kiss upon the lips, a slap upon the thigh._

_“Now let me off. I’m hungry for wants. You’ll have it soon enough.”_

_Hilda lets her go._

_But she doesn’t want sex._

_Not at the whole of it._

_She wants more Zelda._

_Zelda just wants more._

~*~

It was very warm.

Dying.

Hotter than by sister’s hands.

And far, far colder.

They shouldn’t have gotten to kill her.

_They_ didn’t love her.

They didn’t even _know_ her.

But she’d died with Zelda on her lips.

So she’d died well.

She’s had enough practice to know.

~*~

And now.

It’s dark here.

Grim and brimstone.

A pulse asymmetric pounds orange and yellow and red against the walls that squirm like skin.

It’s too fast and too slow to be human.

Her heart’s not beating anymore.

There’s a throne like hands and a wave of cries and demands that sound like demon children or maybe tortured souls or maybe the unending and aching hope that someday this place won’t be so full.

And her heart’s not beating anymore.

“Welcome to hell.”

The sultry tone so clear.

Gold dripped finger bones adorning dark hair.

Eyes gleaming hungry and ready to feast.

“Lilith.”

“Hilda.”

The queen of hell bows her head and tucks Hilda’s hand into the crook of her elbow, tugging her insistently along to a bleeding door that wails as it opens and the handle blinks a blue and bloodshot eye.

“Let’s take a walk.”

They walk.

Lilith is hotter than human or witch—burning in this place of body and twisting and wreaked havoc.

She’s glowing.

Like she’s made to be here.

Zelda would be awed.

Zelda isn’t here.

Hilda stumbles into the wall, squeaks as it squelches against her hand, intent to suck her into a gummy and gaping maw.

Lilith only chuckles and grips Hilda’s elbow.

Their steps echo like stone and Zelda is not here.

Hilda isn’t quite glad for it.

And her heart’s not beating anymore.

It isn’t there at all.

~*~

This is the world without Hilda in it.

~*~

Zelda waits at the gates and demands hell open to her.

It does so on unrepentant hinges.

~*~

She’s disappointed to find.

Hell feels the same as anywhere.

Hilda isn’t here.

~*~

Her descent is slow and determined.

~*~

Their ascent is slow and ambling.

Lilith’s grip is ironclad and tender.

“We couldn’t figure out where to put you.”

Her shoulder bump is gentle on Hilda’s, but the blow ricochets through Hilda’s empty chest, rattles in her ribcage.

Lilith knows her own strength.

Is toying with her.

“Put me?”

“Oh yes.”

Lilith guides her from the frozen lakes, around the blue limbs stuck out of the ice and reaching for warmth that will never come.

“You, Hildegard Spellman, fit into so many categories. Blasphemer. Sower of discord. Hypocrite. Witch. But—and this is one you might like: above all, you’re _mine_. My little heretic.”

Hilda tugs her hand. It stays put on Lilith’s elbow.

“I’m not.”

“And a liar to boot.”

“I’m not a heretic.”

And Lilith pulls her up, past the poor souls with heads twisted backwards and constantly falling for they cannot see ahead, only behind.

Lilith laughs as if it’s all so funny.

“But are you mine?”

Hilda has no reply.

She’s in hell, where Lilith reigns.

So.

It’s a question that’s already been answered.

~*~

Diana is in limbo no longer.

Zelda is glad for the absence, lonely for it.

It is better to walk the Virgil path alone, so long as no one sneaks up behind you.

It’s better to walk a dangerous road without guilt to drag you down.

Still.

The wails are disorienting.

And she has a nagging suspicion.

Yes.

Someone is behind her.

That’s not what worries.

In hell, there is always something malevolent behind you.

What worries is ahead.

Zelda can feel it, staring back at her.

Hoping she never arrives.

She takes her steps slowly, takes care not to fall.

~*~

“We could put you with your brother.”

There are hands on their path. Reaching out, muscles straining, veins popping with effort to be seen.

To be saved.

Lilith steps on one, heel puncturing a palm.

It retreats with a curse and a plea.

“Edward’s here?”

Hilda minds her steps carefully, but Lilith tugs ever insistent.

“Where else could he be?”

Sobering thought.

Hilda squeezes a little tighter.

Lilith pats her hand.

The bones rattle.

Hilda settles.

“He could also be a blasphemer. But no, he’s just greedy. Gluttonous. And isn’t that very much like men.”

Lilith nods her head at Hilda, unquizzically, unequivocally pleased.

“You’re greedy too. I’ve seen it in your life.”

“That’s not true.”

And Lilith laughs.

Pulls Hilda so quick and tight to her, the little witch steps on a hand too.

A shriek.

High-pitched and young.

“See, that’s what I like about you. You’re just so _funny_.”

~*~

The path is so overgrown.

It’s been walked only a few times.

Zelda feels stasis.

She isn’t tired, isn’t hungry, isn’t winded.

She just.

Isn’t.

This is no place for witches or mortals.

This is no place at all.

She hasn’t moved to anywhere.

She hasn’t even managed to walk in circles.

Against her better judgement, against the screaming in her mind to keep going, lest they get her, she stops.

Raises an open hand to the vaulted sky.

Clenches power in her fist.

“Hordes of Hades, let me past. I have commission, and it is not with you.”

There is halt.

Then, a lover’s sigh against the gray pallor and rock.

Coming towards her, unstuck and no longer still, a stream of blood trickles to her feet and passes on.

It squishes like syrup in her shoes, but she begins her trek once more.

When the sound of buffering winds comes from the distance, she lets it cover her sigh of relief.

She’s hoping the demons have truly let her through, not simply changed tactics.

She’s hoping they fear the commission she will not name.

She’s hoping they won’t discover she’s lying.

She clenches power in her fists and hopes no one notices how the knuckles tremble.

~*~

At last, Lilith stops her relentless pulling on Hilda’s arm, brings them to a halt.

There are rows of tombs here, glowing orange and angry against the pitch, coffins nailed shut and echoing in pandemonium the relentless pound of fists and screams.

All desperate to be let out.

All desperate to die again.

Lilith lets Hilda go to open a casket.

Heatwaves and ash rise up, glowing embers raving hot and feverish.

“All right. Get in.”

Lilith’s little gesture is to comfort, is gentle.

Hilda rears back, head shaking in terrified denial.

The queen of hell crooks two fingers, Hilda slides against her will into those steel and skin arms.

“Come now Hilda... take your punishment.”

Lilith’s voice is all coaxing, her arms silk strong.

The bone hands around her ribcage dig into Hilda’s breasts.

Hilda shakes her head again fiercely.

Dainty touch, Lilith pushes trembling curls behind Hilda’s ear, nails scratching pleasantly against the shell of it.

Down further to the nape of her neck.

Heat like desire zips down the spine.

Hilda shivers and makes noise.

“Hildegard Antionette Spellman.” Lilith scolds, shushing Hilda’s whimpers, petting that halo of gold curls in mothering tenderness.

“You little sinner.”

Hilda pulses with shame she does not truly feel, mouth open, legs aching.

“I’m not.”

And Lilith laughs a third time.

“Oh but you are.”

Hilda wants to run, to fall apart, to be scooped up and held gently.

But there’s only Lilith, pulling her in and taking her hand and leading her to certain doom.

And she’s wanting it.

But she doesn’t.

Lilith is doing this, and Hilda is afraid.

“I’ve seen your heart. I know what it holds.”

Lilith’s ribcaged dress pushes deeper to Hilda’s hollow chest.

“You lust for your sister, crave her constantly. Greedy that it only be you and her, keeping her back from ever attaining her true potential.”

Hilda’s eyes start to leak.

Guilt eked out.

“You hold a leash of leaving over her. Constantly threatening something you’re too scared to go through with. Cowardice.”

Hilda twists away, Lilith’s arm a clamp around her middle, voice ghosting in her left ear.

“You love her more than you love your brother. Disloyal.”

Her hand is pulled from her side, held tenderly in Lilith’s grasp.

She watches with wide eyes as it moves to her bespoke prison.

Cannot squeak or scream as it’s gently shoved into the open casket.

Flames lick around her flesh, the very air burning her fingers and charring her sweater and roasting all the way up into whole body agony.

“What’s worse, you love her more than you love your own god. Heresy of the highest order, how you worship her.”

Hurts too much to scream.

There is this promise: she will get used to it.

And then she will scream.

“So don’t deny it, little Hilda Spellman. You deserve this.”

She nods.

Dumbstruck by pain and a quake like lust.

But a truth is welling up within her, against the tears and fear and Lilith’s chamomile voice.

She screams, and there’s power.

“_I don’t_!”

And then there’s halt.

Lilith pulls out her hand, slams the coffin shut, releases her entirely and claps her hands together.

The shrieks and pains and tombs disappear.

They’re in the hand throne room again, as if they’d never left.

“Well then,” Lilith coos, perched on her throne and smiling down at Hilda’s bewildered face.

“Let’s discuss your options.”

~*~

Zelda hunched over by buffeting winds, hair tossed and tangled against the shrieks and howls of force.

She follows the path of blood, her feet red-connected to it.

Occasionally, bodies collide with hers.

Blown like leaves on the ground, they grasp her ankles and beg her to lead them out.

She shakes them off and pulls tighter inwards, a stone face to prove she’s not sympathetic or afraid.

She’s almost to the end, the storm is dying down, and hope lifts.

Another hand grabs her by the ankle.

The fingers are too familiar to ignore.

“Zelda Spellman.”

And there is Lady Blackwood, still full-bellied and wild-eyed, clawing at the fabric of Zelda’s pants.

“Constance? Why are you here?”

“They had nowhere to put me in wrath, my vengeance never carried full term. So I’m here, in the fields of lust, because I never loved my husband enough, and I wanted too many others.”

It shocks Zelda to hear it.

Constance had embodied her name.

To turn out a _lie_, well.

How deeply truth clashes in perceptions of other people.

“I wanted your sister.” Lady Blackwood confides, pulling herself closer on weak muscles.

“I asked of her constantly. Dreamed to taste more of her than her food. Is she here?”

Constance looks around, for glimpse of the favored blonde.

Disgust twists on Zelda’s lips.

And then Constance’s fingers turned talon, digging into the fine skin.

“And what of my children? Are they living the life they should?”

Zelda wrenches away, claws raking against her ankle bone as she fights to be free.

“What of my daughter?”

Lady Blackwood is kicked off, but her voice carries on the wind, haunting Zelda’s quickened steps.

“Shame on you, Zelda Spellman. How dare you waste the lives you’ve been given.”

Zelda shudders and pulls herself inwards once more.

She goes on, the dead woman’s curses ringing heavy in her ears.

~*~

“Would you like some tea?”

Lilith is all simper, all calm, all smiles and winks as though she had not tried to wrestle Hilda into damnation just a few moments ago.

She snaps her fingers and they’re in the Spellman kitchen, the kettle whistling away like some benign friend.

Hilda holds the counter and blinks very fast.

“I’d offer to cook you something, but that’s more of _your _department, isn’t it.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening.”

Lilith sighs, turns off the stove. Pours hot water into her hand that should burn but instead is only a teacup.

She sips from porcelain without blowing off steam.

“It’s simple. You are exactly as I said.”

A ginger snap fabricates from her fingers and bleeds when she bites into it.

“Luckily, that’s what I like about you.”

“But you just said I deserved to suffer for it.”

“Yes. That wasn’t true, was it now.”

Hilda’s curls swing in wild abandon as she tries to wrap her head around this game that keeps changing the rules.

“I don’t understand, what—”

Lilith sighs, letting both the teacup and cookie fall into nothingness.

A hand reaching out, pulling Hilda’s cheek to her cheek, a whisper against the curvature of her ear.

A secret being given.

“We are stuck here, Hilda, yes. Determined to suffer. But by whose standards? A billion souls and a thousand gods and a billion afterlives cannot be contained in only nine circles—only one form of eternal damnation. Surely the creators have more imagination than that.”

Hands slither from cheeks, down the neck, traversing cardigan planes till they settle, warm and gripping on ample hips.

Lilith’s breath is hot and intoxicating on Hilda’s cheek.

“How fortunate for you that I am sovereign here, and I have an _excellent_ imagination.”

Hilda keeps her hands to herself, clenched tight on her skirts, a blush spread ripe on her face.

“So where do I fit into all this? What am I to do?”

And then the grasping hands are gone, Lilith is dissipating to the air.

“What are you to do? Nothing. Just stay.”

And it’s just her.

Hilda, alone in her empty house.

Nowhere to go. Nothing to do.

She stays.

~*~

Zelda trudges on.

Untethered.

Uncoiffed.

Her feet ache with miles.

There have been no mornings, no nights, no need for sleep or rest or bravery to keep going.

Her steps have caught a rhythm.

She’s grown good at kicking away hands.

This pit must have no bottom.

She keeps going lower.

There are faces she recognizes, bodies she’s turned away from.

There’s a strand of herself she must have left back home, it unspools a little more with every stride, tugs sharply with yearning when she thinks of returning.

Her thoughts scuttle along the gravel, her eyes glassy and bored with the little red river.

There has been noise since she’s entered, but the shrieks are getting louder now.

Fog rises from the distance, thick and soupy, clinging to the strands of her hair before sliding into her lungs, heavy with every breath.

There’s a river of silver water, murky mercury. Bodies rise to the air, to breathe and to scream and to slink back under the depths, silent once more.

There’s a dock made from driftwood, worm-eaten and creaky. A ferryman waits on a boat made to sink.

Doesn’t speak as Zelda approaches, merely holds out a hand, for payment.

Doesn’t accept her beggar’s coin.

She slips a gold ring from her little finger, a passing gift from a passing mother, and gives it over.

It’s weighed in a gnarled hand.

Accepted.

The barge rocks with her weight, she sits gingerly on the hard, wooden slats and prays to make it through.

The river is calm, misting into fog, making Zelda’s head go swimmy and forgetful, like she’s only dreaming.

Heads come up to scream with rage, but water slips into their mouths and they go docile once again, to float along the current till memory and rage strike harsh once again.

It’s hard to remember what they sound like.

Zelda’s eyes start to droop.

A hand shoots out, catches the side of the boat. A screaming woman launches herself halfway up, chest sagging with molten liquid and dripping onto the floor.

“_You_,” she seethes, flecks of river and spittle on the corner of her snarling lips.

“This is your fault.”

Zelda gasps, anger ignited.

“Shirley Jackson. So you ended up here.”

“Your bitch of a sister killed me for you.”

“I only wish I could have been there to see it.”

Webbing hands reach for her, to pull her to the water.

“She’s going to burn here with me, and it’ll be all your fault.”

Taunt sharp on her tongue, Zelda falters. Can only stumble back.

Hilda could be here.

She doesn’t know.

She isn’t sure.

Shirley catches it, grins maniacal.

“Maybe she’s here already. You’re a bad sister for not knowing. Let’s search together.”

With that, Shirley lunges.

The ferry man’s oar hits her squarely in the chest before she’s reached Zelda, shoves her back into the water.

She gasps to breathe, gurgles water.

Eyes go vacant, she goes under.

Zelda shudders, returns to the middle of the boat.

The ferryman says nothing.

They keep going.

~*~

It’s been a hundred days.

A hundred years.

Or maybe no time has passed at all.

All Hilda knows is that she’s alone in a house that isn’t quite real, and time is slipping from her like loose strands of hair.

The morning is for cleaning, lavender soap in a piping hot shower.

The morning passes very quickly.

The day is for cooking, for tending dirt things that never seem to grow.

The day passes very quickly.

The evening is for Lilith.

She waltzes in, at some dark time of night for there are no clocks, and she stays.

She eats Hilda’s dinners and silently appreciates.

She always offers tea. Hilda always declines.

So she moves to the parlor and fills out something like devil’s paperwork.

She gives Hilda little gifts, like pots of dirt and spiderweb silk and lavender soap and watches how Hilda moves to put them away.

She watches Hilda an awful lot.

Gaze so weighted and lazy in its desire. She grins every time Hilda blushes.

And when it’s time for her to leave, she always grabs Hilda and presses close, enveloping Hilda in unholy warmth and the smell of a garden that was long ago abandoned.

She smells divine, and Hilda is weak to it.

She doesn’t say much to Hilda’s blustering, and she never gives reasons to why she’s keeping her here, and her demand for physical closeness is nothing short of aggravating.

But when she leaves soft-mouthed kisses against Hilda’s cheek, when she disappears, and when Hilda is left alone once more.

Hilda finds she misses Lilith quite a lot.

Looks forward to her return.

But then the night comes.

The night is for Zelda.

Hilda misses her in dreams and breaths and every moment in between.

The night passes very, very slowly.

~*~

There is a certain kind of hopelessness that comes with eternal thinking within an ephemeral mind.

The living cannot stay in the land of the dead for too long, their grasp of time too linear to withstand it.

Zelda finds this to be so.

She’s crossed the River Styx and avoided the River Lethe, and has only discovered they’re connected when she finds herself upriver and Lethe is the reason limbo is filled with souls who can’t remember their own names.

And she’s back in limbo.

All that effort, and all she’s done is ascended.

It’s been so long, and she’s only looped.

Her cry is so angry, the souls scatter for fear of wild dogs or demon.

~*~

“Do you know that we’re very similar?” Lilith speculates, leaning forward on the couch to touch Hilda’s knee through her skirt.

Hilda’s eyes grow wary but she still shifts closer.

“How so?”

The hand is now on her thigh.

“We have both been stuck in the shadows of those we covet. Waiting for the right opportunity to take what’s ours.”

Hilda sighs.

Her pinky touches Lilith’s.

“You always say things to bait my denial. Do you just like trying to prove me wrong? You’re not true.”

The hand lifts, a warm thumb sweeping the apple of Hilda’s cheek.

“But I’m not wrong. You’ve never, not once, wanted something that’s Zelda’s?”

Hilda’s hands go up in exasperation.

“I just want something that’s mine!”

A pause, then a Cheshire grin.

“Exactly.”

And then Lilith is leaning in and kissing Hilda full on the mouth.

~*~

Zelda has stopped counting days, stopped counting steps, stopped counting sanity.

She’s lost her shoes, trudges on with bare feet.

The coil of her determination has unspooled, though she knows she’s searching for Hilda.

It is the only will of hers that hasn’t relented to these depths of despair.

She’s crossed more rivers and walked more paths and she hasn’t found Hilda anywhere.

She’s seen justice to ancient wrongs no one remembers, and she knows the souls need their pain to feel important.

To be remembered.

Even if only by themselves.

She’s forgotten why she came.

Zelda sits on the cliffs of treachery, overlooking the expanse of ice and the bodies trapped within.

She feels closer to something, but she isn’t sure what.

She watches a man kiss his teacher’s cheek, silver payment for his life hidden behind his back.

She watches a man stabbed, first once and then twenty-two times more.

She sees a man lunge at his brother with malicious intent.

Every scene, again and again, a tableau of trust and family and betrayal and death.

And in a terrible moment of clarity, Zelda remembers why she’s here.

She watches Cain kill Abel, and she is ashamed.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She startles, staring up at a man she’d never paid any attention to when he was alive.

“Principal Hawthorne. They said you’d gone on sabbatical, not...”

“Oh, they think I am—they don’t know _where_ I am. But I’m here. Lilith _ate _me.”

Zelda’s “oh” is quiet and small.

He sits down next to her on the ledge. She tries not to stare.

She does so anyway.

He’s in shoes and khaki, but his white shirt is in tatters, leaving his torso open to scrutiny.

There is an eye blinking in his abdomen.

And extra everything.

He is not the most disgusting thing Zelda has seen in Tartarus.

She is still repulsed.

“Ate my brother in the womb.” He says, casual as anything, sighing as he stares out into the cold abyss.

“Didn’t look like this when I was alive. But always when I dreamed.”

Zelda closes her eyes and wishes she was very far away.

“I showed your sister once; in a demon’s dream.”

Eyes fly open at that.

“I told her I ate him up, because I was greedy. I wanted everyone’s life and love—only for me. And she looked at me, and I saw guilt.”

Tears well on a marble face, Zelda watches Cain and listens.

“And then she was tied to you. Stuck. _Trapped_. Forever. And her last words I could hear were ‘Don’t leave me alone with her.’”

The silence is eerie for too long a time.

Hawthorne’s dead bones grow stiff on the rocks.

“Lilith knows you’re here,” he finally says. “She’s had enough of your tourism. Go home.”

“Not without Hilda.”

The quiet words ring out with stubborn, clinging, emaciated hope.

“Are you sure she wants you?”

A blink drops a tear. The lower lip trembles.

But Zelda is resolute.

Hawthorne pauses, as though in deep thought or conversation, then shrugs and stands.

“Alright. We’ll let Hilda tell you herself.”

He walks off the ledge into nothingness.

Zelda stands on shaky legs, blood thumping, heart pounding.

She could see Hilda, or she could plummet to her death.

A deep breath loud in the ears and lungs.

She steps off too and plunges into darkness.

~*~

Tonight, Lilith comes bearing no gifts.

Not that Hilda was expecting it.

The broken tradition is simply strange.

But then Lilith is grinning so hungry, arms out and a purr in her “Come and hold these old bones.”

Hilda tastes no suspicion on those enigmatic lips.

Their dinner is quiet and fine—when Lilith makes tea, Hilda goes to retrieve her knitting needles.

A pattern they have done before.

But the tea is noxious and steaming when she comes back to the kitchen.

Which is different. And uncomfortable. 

Lilith’s smile is fake and hiding something like trepidation.

“I have come to a decision,” Lilith states. “So you ought to know it.”

She reaches for Hilda’s hand, nails digging in as she holds it.

“Zelda is here.”

Every nerve on fire.

Buzzing in the skull.

Rapture in the brain.

Hilda feels life again.

Zelda. Is _here_.

“She’s not dead yet,” Lilith says, frowning at the smile Hilda can’t contain nor control. “She’s still alive, so she can’t stay.”

“But I can see her?”

Hilda bounces on her toes, shoulders scrunched and lips bitten to keep the excitement at bay.

She’s doing a poor job of it.

Lilith cups those giddy cheeks between two palms, the heat of them for once matched as Hilda beams.

She kisses lips and Hilda feels her happiness drain.

She’s briefly annoyed. Then nothing.

“Hilda,” Lilith speaks quietly, a warning she’s about to strike a blow. “Zelda won’t leave without you. This place eats away at her as we speak and the gates of egress have closed.”

Hilda’s blink is dazed and confused.

“She’s stuck here?”

“In a way.”

“Then save her—or bring her here.”

“Besides what you and Sabrina think,” Lilith growls, releasing Hilda with a snap, pacing the floor in sudden ire.

“I am not the Spellman’s personal guardian. Nor will I meddle with my own rules. Zelda has no heresy of her own, nor does she believe herself undeserving of the underworld’s self-governing justice. So she doesn’t belong in this place. But she won’t let you go, and I won’t give up what’s mine. And there are _rules_.”

She goes quiet towards the end.

Looks at Hilda.

“You have to turn her away.”

Already Hilda’s head shakes a no.

“I can’t do that.”

“You will, if you love her.”

Again, another no.

“She has life left on earth, Hilda. Would you strip her of that, condemn her to eternal punishment before her time? She still has chance to change.”

Hilda bites her lip as she thinks it over.

She’s not sure how long she’s been here, how long _Zelda’s_ been here.

She knows for Zelda things must be very different.

She hopes Zelda isn’t hurting.

And then she’s looking in Lilith’s hungry eyes, trying to suss out a truth.

“You don’t want to save Zelda. You don’t care for her afterlife. What _do _you want?”

Lilith rears up.

Tall and proud and honest.

“Your obsession.”

Her shoulders lower a fraction, the only hint of emotion.

“Your devotion. You hold Zelda so tight to your essence, there’s nothing you want more than her to be wholly yours. I want you to be wholly mine.”

Hilda is mystified.

“Why?”

“You are an oasis.”

Lilith shrugs, and in it Hilda can see an all-consuming loneliness.

Lilith.

The lonely mother of demons.

The sole queen of hell.

“What’s wrong with wanting a little sanctuary?”

In this moment, Hilda wonders.

Maybe she could love her.

“What would you have me do?”

A blink, then Lilith pushes the still steaming teacup her way.

“Drink from the River Lethe, and forget Zelda. Then we can start over. Or don’t. It’s your choice.”

Lilith wipes away her vulnerability with a half grin, and then she’s gone.

Perhaps to fetch Zelda, perhaps to steer clear.

Either way, Hilda is left alone in the kitchen with a teacup of forgetting and a terrible decision to make.

She sits in this oasis, stares at the cup, and waits for her sister to get here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading!! I can't promise when the next chapter will be done, but I will promise to try my best and make it worth the wait <3

**Author's Note:**

> ngl this was really hard to write  
pls be gentle w/ it  
it will get better


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